Translation elicits a growth rate‐dependent, genome‐wide, differential protein production in Bacillus subtilis

Complex regulatory programs control cell adaptation to environmental changes by setting condition‐specific proteomes. In balanced growth, bacterial protein abundances depend on the dilution rate, transcript abundances and transcript‐specific translation efficiencies. We revisited the current theory claiming the invariance of bacterial translation efficiency. By integrating genome‐wide transcriptome datasets and datasets from a library of synthetic gfp‐reporter fusions, we demonstrated that translation efficiencies in Bacillus subtilis decreased up to fourfold from slow to fast growth. The translation initiation regions elicited a growth rate‐dependent, differential production of proteins without regulators, hence revealing a unique, hard‐coded, growth rate‐dependent mode of regulation. We combined model‐based data analyses of transcript and protein abundances genome‐wide and revealed that this global regulation is extensively used in B. subtilis. We eventually developed a knowledge‐based, three‐step translation initiation model, experimentally challenged the model predictions and proposed that a growth rate‐dependent drop in free ribosome abundance accounted for the differential protein production.